They called one “Shorty,” they called another “The Judge,” One man wore the Virgin’s medal around his neck, One had a broken nose and one was a liar, “Respectfully submitted⁠—” But, now and then, A man or a scene escapes from the mummy-cases, Like smoke escaping, blue smoke coiling into pictures, Stare at those coils⁠— and see in the hardened smoke, The triple stockade of Andersonville the damned, Where men corrupted like flies in their own dung And the gangrened sick were black with smoke and their filth. There were thirty thousand Federal soldiers there Before the end of the war. A man called Wirtz, A Swiss, half brute, half fool, and wholly a clod, Commanded that camp of spectres. One reads what he did And longs to hang him higher than Haman hung, And then one reads what he said when he was tried After the war⁠—and sees the long, heavy face, The dull fly buzzing stupidly in the trap,